This was a pretty wild
Memorial Day Weekend at the Box Office! Or at least it was for everyone geared
up for Top Gun: Maverick (2022)! But I watched The
Bob's Burgers Movie (2022) instead, which was an equally importantly
nostalgic style of filmmaking - The big screen adult animated show adaptation!
SPOILERs hotter than a hot rod to follow.
Bob's Burgers has quietly been on the air for twelve
seasons. That's nuts. I guess we just don't cancel animated series anymore
(See the fact that American Dad! has
somehow been renewed through Season 21). But Bob’s Burgers feels hardly like its contemporaries. It’s such a
subtle, family-based show. It’s more King
of the Hill than Family Guy, with
hardly any interest in shock humour, pop culture references, or even a dynamic
protagonist.
It’s wildly
entertaining. I stopped watching a few years ago when the sameness of each
episode started getting to me, but it’s so wholesome that I couldn’t consider
myself anti-Bob. It even works
through H. Jon Benjamin’s ubiquitous voice. But it’s always feels so under the
radar. It’s unbelievable they made a movie about this.
This feels like the
marketing move of yesteryear when we got a South
Park movie in 1999, a Simpsons
movie in 2007, and what feels like an insane number of Rugrats movies. All those standards are there – a huge upgrade in
animation and blocking (shadows!), big musical numbers, and centering around
the reveal of a gimmicky thing they’ve never revealed in the show (what’s under
Louise’s ears). Except unlike Kenny’s face, they still don’t show it.
This is a genuinely feel
good summer movie. The plot is significant, but in Burgers fashion, it’s not all THAT dramatic. Sure, the family is in
danger of losing the restaurant, but when are they not!? And there is a
sinister murder plot, but that also could be an episode. The film works by
giving each character a basic but sincere motivation and playing that off with
earned set-ups and payoffs for the rest of the film. Tina wants to ask out
Jimmy Jr, Gene wants to play music, and Louise wants to prove she’s not a baby.
It’s all standard Bob’s Burgers fare,
but that’s why it works. It stays really true to the show while finding new
ways to challenge these characters and spinning their typical tropes.
It showcases most of its
secondary characters, from Mickey to the Fischoeders (a central plot point),
although there’s not much from Jimmy Pesto or Gail or Mort. The former might be
because the voice actor was in the Capitol Riot. Yaaaay. But it delivers what
fans of the show want, which is a little spotlight for everyone.
The show is incredibly
musical, almost every episode has a little song in it, sometimes just over the
end credits, and the film is no different – it actually had a bit less songs
than I expected. They mostly land, and the choreography is expansive and
exciting, which always happens when characters in such a static show look so
dynamic. Their faces weren’t that expressionable, which threw me off a bit, but
it was still very fun.
It's also very genuinely
funny. The humour comes from character traits instead of conflict, which is
always a bit of an acquired taste, and it always spins things in a slightly
unexpected way. The peak of the film, when the family is SPOILER buried alive
contains one of the most magnificent comedic sequences in recent memory. It
gets its comedy from goofiness, commitment, and pay off. You know, classic
comedy. It’s always weird to watch this and then see comedians complain that
comedy is dead or that we don’t know how to laugh anymore. We’ve never needed Bob’s Burgers more than right now.
The main plot gets going
when Louise finds a dead body in a sinkhole and the mystery is afoot! You can
guess where this is going when they introduce a new character, voiced by David
Wain. Like, it’s always the new guy since a murder accusation of any main
character would both throw off the show and paint a rough color on any
preceding character. You can see it coming. Although it only worked for me
because I figured Wain’s character was a recent addition to the show that I had
missed. They sell you on the many possible suspects and it all works.
It does through you
right into the action as if it were just another Season 12 episode that you’ve
been binge watching. There’s almost no character introduction or grounding in
the world, which was refreshingly efficient for someone familiar with the show,
but I’m curious if someone would be lost going into this. I don’t really think
so, this is really the kind of show that’s easy to figure out pretty fast, and
that holds well for the movie as well.
There’s almost no
celebrities brought into the cast, which is the good move. It really just feels
like a long and magnificent episode of the show, and I say that in the best way
possible. It was a lot of fun, a wholesome little excursion on a fun Saturday
Memorial afternoon and it hit everywhere it needed to.
And as usual, there are
plenty of puns here that work really well. I’m just waiting for The Great
North movie now!
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